The New Economy Will Require Empathy - Brian Solis

More Intelligent Tomorrow: a DataRobot Podcast

More Intelligent Tomorrow host Dave Anderson sits down with Brain Solis to talk about interesting ways to get creative solutions to our long-standing challenges.

Dave Anderson is a keynote speaker, tech evangelist, and podcast host with a refreshing perspective on marketing, analytics, and technology.

Brian Solis is a digital analyst, speaker, and author. Brian currently serves as the Global Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce. His work focuses on thought leadership and research into studying disruptive technologies.

They begin their conversation talking about what disruption is and what it isn’t.

At the heart of it, disruption isn't about technology. It's about changing the norm. It’s about shaking people out of their comfortable ways of thinking to find new and better ways to approach problems.

Doing the same thing over and over can saturate a market. Eventually it calls out for something new. Just like a wildfire can renew a forest, disruption becomes a means for reinvigorating a market.

But companies today are still using legacy systems designed for scale and efficiency to protect themselves from disruption in the future. They're still the wrong tools for the job.

“76% of all employees say that they don't feel that they have the digital skills necessary to work in this new economy.”

We don't have all the answers. We can only scenario plan so much. That's the nature of disruption. If we’re going to fix this skill gap and be ready for change to come, everyone needs to feel involved. Everyone needs to feel relevant. Agreeing to change requires empathy toward everyone involved.
Empathy is just as important as intelligence.

By being empathetic to what the workforce needs to succeed in the future, we can build these skills into our education system. We can bring up a generation that’s prepared to take on new disruptions and thrive.

The best way to accelerate creativity and innovation within organizations is to be empathetic and give people the room they need to follow ideas that are outside their normal work. Companies like Google with their 20% program not only understand this, but they practice it.

Empathy is understanding how someone else sees the world. A lack of empathy is one of the reasons we don’t respond well to change. Without empathy, we lack a sense of urgency to change that doesn't immediately impact us. The gift of empathy is a powerful tool.

An anecdote from Brian about the TV show, Ted Lasso, brings him around to talking about how company management needs to develop more empathy.

A problem with current leadership is that they don't stop to ask questions. They aren't curious. They don't put themselves in their customer or employee's positions. They need to learn to ask “why” over and over. Kids do it naturally, and we should embrace it as a path toward continuous evolution.

Dave closed out the show by asking Brian how he thinks we get more intelligent.

“Try not to be better than anyone else, try to be better than you were yesterday.”

This episode includes discussion of:

• Embracing disruption as an agent of positive change
• Asking if we're ready for the changes ahead of us or planning for the a future using tools of the past.
• Leveraging empathy to find creative solutions to our problems
• The role of empathy in our thinking about education
• Asking, “why” over and over as a tool to achieving continuous evolution